This book provides in-depth descriptions and analysis of how cash transfer programs have evolved and been used in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2000. The analysis focuses on program features and implementation, but it also highlights political economy issues and current knowledge gaps.

This book explores Conditional Cash Transfers programs within the context of education policy over the past several decades. Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) provide cash to poor families upon the fulfillment of conditions related to the education and health of their children. Even though CCTs aim to improve educational attainment, it is not clear whether Departments or Ministries of Education have internalized CCTs into their own sets of policies and whether that has had an impact on the quality of education being offered to low income students. Equally intriguing is the question of how conditional cash transfer programs have been politically sustained in so many countries, some of them having existed for over ten years. In order to explore that, this book will build upon a comparative study of three programs across the Americas: Opportunity NYC, Subsidios Condicionados a la Asistencia Escolar (Bogota, Colombia), and Bolsa Famila (Brazil). The book presents a detailed and non-official account on the NYC and Bogota programs and will analyze CCTs from both a political and education policy perspective.

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs aim to reduce poverty by making welfare programs conditional upon the receivers' actions. That is, the government only transfers the money to persons who meet certain criteria. These criteria may include enrolling children into public schools, getting regular check-ups at the doctor's office, receiving vaccinations, or the like. They have been hailed as a way of reducing inequality and helping households break out of a vicious cycle whereby poverty is transmitted from one generation to another. Do these and other claims make sense? Are they supported by the available empirical evidence? This volume seeks to answer these and other related questions. Specifically, it lays out a conceptual framework for thinking about the economic rationale for CCTs; it reviews the very rich evidence that has accumulated on CCTs; it discusses how the conceptual framework and the evidence on impacts should inform the design of CCT programs in practice; and it discusses how CCTs fit in the context of broader social policies. The authors show that there is considerable evidence that CCTs have improved the lives of poor people and argue that conditional cash transfers have been an effective way of redistributing income to the poor. They also recognize that even the best-designed and managed CCT cannot fulfill all of the needs of a comprehensive social protection system. They therefore need to be complemented with other interventions, such as workfare or employment programs, and social pensions.

This open access book asks whether cash-transfer programs for very low-income households promote social and economic citizenship and, if so, under what conditions. To this end, it brings together elements that are too often considered separately: the transformation of social and economic citizenship rights in a market-centered context, and the increasing popularity of cash transfer as an instrument both of social policy and humanitarian action. We link these by juxtaposing theoretical treatment of citizenship and inclusion with concrete policy case studies set in contemporary Turkey. Cases are taken both from domestic social policy and international relief efforts aimed at Syrian refugees. Theoretical discussion and case studies lead to the conclusion that cash transfer programs can promote economic and social inclusion – if deployed at an appropriate scale; if sufficient financial, technical, and social resources are available; and if program design and implementation promotes market inclusion of beneficiaries both as consumers and workers.

In emergencies, distributing cash in a targeted manner can often meet people's immediate needs more quickly and appropriately than the direct distribution of commodities such as food aid. Cash gives people choices and thereby preserves their dignity. Commodity distribution may pose logistical problems, takes time, and in the case of food aid, may disrupt local markets if food is actually available within the affected country or region. But among humanitarian agencies there are fears that cash transfers will pose security risks, create inflation, and fail to be used to meet basic needs. In this guide, the first of its kind, Oxfam staff members present the rationale behind cash-transfer programs, considering the arguments for and against cash as an alternative to commodity distribution. They also give guidance on when cash is the most appropriate intervention and how to assess this. Different types of cash intervention are compared--cash grants, vouchers, and cash-for-work--and the guide uses checklists to explain the practical steps involved in implementing them. They draw on the experience of Oxfam and other agencies of operating such programs, including responses to the devastation caused by the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004. The guidelines are primarily intended for NGO personnel: humanitarian program managers, food-security specialists, public-health engineers, finance staff, and logisticians. Policymakers in donor organizations and international agencies will also find them relevant. The sixteen cards contain key elements from the book to explain how to assess whether cash is the most appropriate response to any particular emergency. The cards and the paperback are also available as a set.

More children born today will survive to adulthood than at any time in history. It is now time to emphasize health and development in middle childhood and adolescence--developmental phases that are critical to health in adulthood and the next generation. Child and Adolescent Health and Development explores the benefits that accrue from sustained and targeted interventions across the first two decades of life. The volume outlines the investment case for effective, costed, and scalable interventions for low-resource settings, emphasizing the cross-sectoral role of education. This evidence base can guide policy makers in prioritizing actions to promote survival, health, cognition, and physical growth throughout childhood and adolescence.

Cash transfers have become a key social protection tool in developing countries and have expanded dramatically in the last two decades. However, the impacts of cash transfers programmes, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, have not been substantially documented. This book presents a detailed overview of the impact evaluations of these programmes, carried out by the Transfer Project and FAO’s From Protection to Production project. The 14 chapters include a review of eight country case studies: Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, as well as a description of the innovative research methodologies, political economy issues and good practices to design cash transfer programmes. The key objective of the book is to enhance the understanding of these development programmes, how they lead to a broad range of social and productive impacts and also of the role of programme evaluation in the process of developing policies and implementing programmes.

Marginal in status a decade ago, cash transfer programs have become the preferred channel for delivering emergency aid or tackling poverty in low- and middle-income countries. While these programs have had positive effects, they are typical of top-down development interventions in that they impose on local contexts standardized norms and procedures regarding conditionality, targeting, and delivery. This book sheds light on the crucial importance of these contexts and the many unpredicted consequences of cash transfer programs worldwide - detailing how the latter are used by actors to pursue their own strategies, and how external norms are reinterpreted, circumvented, and contested by local populations.

This evaluation of Yemen’s Cash for Nutrition intervention, a cash transfer program combined with nutritional trainings implemented by the Yemen Social Fund for Development (YSF), examines the program’s impacts on child nutrition indicators and related intermediate variables during a period of conflict. The decline in several indicators of welfare for the sample population that occurred after the beginning of the civil conflict in Yemen is also traced. Overall, the program decreased the share of children diagnosed with moderate or severe malnutrition and improved anthropometric indicators of nutritional status in children in the poorest third of households. The Cash for Nutrition program was funded by the World Bank through the United Nations Development Programme as part of the Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project.